"We are all Cady Herons" - Nicole Tremaglio on navigating identity in the chaos of cores.
Who will you sit with in the TikTok cafeteria?
In 2017, cultural theorist Ted Polhemus wrote (extremely presciently in my view) of the virtual ‘supermarket of style’. Where once the strait jacket of the monoculture that required we subscribe to a single aesthetic identity, the decentralization of media, Polhemus theorized, had resulted in an environment where we are now free to ‘cut and paste stylistic identity at will’.
“You can try ‘Cream of the ’70s' one night, then switch to ‘Chunky Heavy Metal’ the next night,” writes Polhemus. “Or, alternatively, you can ‘sample and mix’ your own brand of Gazpacho — throwing, say, a Hippie tie-dyed bandana, a pair of Skinhead DMs, a ’50s leopard-print cocktail dress, a Punk mohican and Swinging London mascara into the pot. Give it a good stir and, presto, you’ve got your own, synchronic take on 50 years of popular culture.”
Six years later, Polhemus’ vision isn’t just a reality, it’s gone turbo chaotic. When everything is a ‘core’, sustained subculture no longer exists. Instead, aesthetic identity, like everything else, is consumable and disposable, ready to be used once and discarded.
We have all become chameleons - flitting between clean girl aesthetic one day and bloke-core the next without any long-term investment. If authenticity once defined good taste, then “welcome to the era of unapologetic bad taste.”
One of the figures trying to make sense of it all is Nicole Tremaglio. First carving her career in the ratified corridors of Giorgio Armani and Alice & Olivia, Nicole has now turned her attention towards unpacking identity making in the chaos environment. Through her work as a consultant and her must-listen podcast, ‘Nicstalgia’, she looks back to look forward, delving into the technological trends and aesthetics of the late 90s and early 2000s to find out how we got to where we are and how we can find our route back to authenticity.
In a candid conversation, Nicole and I attempt to untangle the web of aesthetic identity in the current day by exploring how the echoes of millennial culture shaped current day aesthetics, the concept of nostalgia vs ‘nowstalgia’, and how we are all Cady Herons finding our way amongst the aesthetic lunch tables of the TikTok cafeteria.
Nic, thanks for joining us. ‘Nicstalgia’ fixates on the cultural zeitgeist of the late ‘90s and early 00s’. What’s the allure of that era for you?
I’m a middle-of-the road millennial and so I, and my peers, were part of a generation that uniquely experienced an integrated analog and digital upbringing. What fascinates me about this era is that it was the genesis of a full 20 year trend cycle that we are now seeing fully complete. As Taylor Swift said, “I come back stronger than a 90s trend” and as fragments of that time are returning, millennials are expressing a visceral rage of aging that comes with the sudden realization that we did not expect to age on the internet.
You’ve previously explored the concept of ‘Nostalgia’ versus ‘Nowstalgia’ where ‘Nostalgia’ is a longing for a time you experienced but ‘Nowstalgia’ is a yearning for a time that you were not present for. How do you discern which you are experiencing?
‘Nowstalgia’ is something that you experience where you were either not alive or too young to be considered a market for it. If we talk about 90s Nickelodeon for example - I was the target market for that because I was a child during the 1990s. Someone who was born in 1998 can’t have Nostalgia for that because while they were technically alive - they don’t remember it themselves and don’t have any firsthand resonance with it.
It seems like with every passing cycle, we are increasingly detached from the original inception of a trend. What’s the implication of ‘Nowstalgia’ through multiple trend cycles?
As trends start to repeat themselves, the ‘nowstalgia’ of an aesthetic compounds and we detach ourselves from its original meaning. For example, my entire childhood’s entire aesthetic was ‘Groovival’ - this kind of 1960s/70s flower power wild child aesthetic - but it’s from the vantage point of the 90s and therefore lacking the sociopolitical context of what was happening - I wasn’t alive during the Vietnam War or the Cuban Missile Crisis and therefore don’t have a complete understanding of what life was like during that time.
When you see the same aesthetics coming back around multiple times, they become even further removed. Multiple layers start to emerge, and interpretation becomes extremely meta. An aesthetic or an outfit can have multiple meanings depending on who’s interpreting it. If we take a tie-dye shirt - do we mean 1960s tie dye, 1990s tie die or 2020 pandemic tie-dye? It’s all different.
I spoke to Max Neely-Cohen and Jessie Char recently about this Gen Z ‘Nowstalgia’ for web 1.0 and a return to customisability - this yearning for tinkering and expression (think HTML on your Myspace profile) that appears on apps like Discog and ‘Nospace’. Is this a true desire or a superficial co-opting of the aesthetic?
The internet exacerbates the idea of generational wars, but youth culture is consistent in the sense that youth always wants to express themselves to figure out who they are and gain status amongst their peers. I wasn’t writing HTML because I cared about HTML, I was doing it because I wanted to express myself on my profile. Customizability can still catch-on now but the resistance is that [customisation] technology is bulky and that presents a learning curve for people.
The internet has gotten so easy - there’s no friction anymore. While there is absolutely an opportunity for customisation, it would have to come back in a simplified ‘drag and drop’ form. Otherwise, people get frustrated and leave and that’s the worst thing that can happen to any app.
There’s a throughline running within what we’ve talked about that aesthetics have basically become poor simulacrum for identity. Stretching that to its most extreme conclusion - what do we find at the end of that tunnel and how do we find our road back from the edge?
The trend cycle has become so hyper that it’s collapsed in on itself. There’s a need for new media models that allow for a rebirth of the curation industry. We don’t need gatekeeping in the sense that you have to be elitist but there needs to be arbiters of taste that can help us navigate.
If you are scrolling through TikTok, there’s no delineation between what’s genuine and what’s not and the average person does not have the tools to curate their own personal style into something that’s meaningful to them.
Fashion history and education is critical and it’s missing on TikTok. We call everything ‘-core’ because most people don’t actually have the language to articulate what it is that they like. [They don’t know] for example the descriptors to say, ‘this is a jabot, this is a Peter Pan collar, this is a bell sleeve’. To be able to understand the origin and context of a particular feature equips us to find genuine style.
It’s ultimately down to how you want to feel and finding the words to identify what it is that resonates with your personality and what you stand for so that you can build your own ‘world’. Putting everything as ‘-core’ eliminates the nuance that makes finding out who you are such an incredibly beautiful process.
Curating your wardrobe is an act of honing your intuition and knowing yourself to the point that you can see something and instantly know if it’s ‘you’ or not.
Nicole is completely a world and I'm always committed to the bit. I'm always on brand. I wore this costume of a paparazzi photo of Britney Spears and my friend was like “I didn’t even know you were dressing up, that’s so on brand for you”. That identity work is my life’s work.
If arbiters of taste are the answer for most people to get to their true selves - that describes a solution that’s hierarchical and top-down - how do you see the peer to peer approach between the arbiters?
That's a great question and how I'm gonna summarize it is comparing the beginning of Mean Girls to the end of Mean Girls.
At the beginning you have Cady going into school. She has no idea what's going on. She's new. Janice explains all of the different cliques and what lunch tables they sit at so that's kind of like TikTok. Picture the cafeteria. The cottage core girls are over here, the dark academia girls are over here, the clean girls are over here.
There’s competition between aesthetics because ultimately it’s always about companies making money, and someone’s always vying for our attention.
How I see the peer to peer environment is that we need to bake the cake that is full of rainbows and smiles, eat it, and be happy.
We can exist in multiple spheres and try aesthetics, but ultimately if I'm over here and you're over there and we're not at the same lunch table anymore –and I joined the lacrosse team and you found a new clique to join – I can still nod at you in acceptance of the aesthetic you’ve chosen.
If we're using clothing to express who we are, how we feel about ourselves, how we see ourselves in the world, and how we relate to other people - then we can also be nice and have kindness for people who dress and express themselves differently than we do.
That’s a beautiful note to end on.
LIGHTNING ROUND!
Your house is burning down and you can only save three items. What do you save?
Palm Angels T-Shirt
Palm Angels, the brand, is an Italian take on American culture and subcultures that specifically nods to using clothing as identity tropes and cultural signifiers. I got this shirt at a time when I did a whole rebrand and was really starting to build my own world. It represents my heritage and culture, and its uniqueness makes me feel special.
Vintage 1990s Sweatshirt
In 1994, my Grammy bought my Dad this sweatshirt at the local grocery store, which is so random –but it’s something that connects to my hometown and family. There really is no place like home.
Charlotte Olympia Zodiac Heels
The story of how I got these red velvet Aries stilettos from Charlotte Olympia’s zodiac collection – complete with a Swarovski crystal-encrusted ram’s head – is literally like a rom-com. I found out about a sample sale when I was traveling and literally went straight from the airport to the Roosevelt Hotel in pouring rain and found these shoes that I had been obsessing about for like a year and a half. I never wear them but they have such sentimental value to me.
Favourite Style Movie?
Everything Mona May does. She is my inspiration. She was the costume designer on Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, Clueless, and Never Been Kissed. These movies really speak for themselves, but the clothes in these movies were really attached to their characters who did their own thing. Cher knew exactly who she was. Was she superficial? Yes, but she had style and she was empowered.
Do you have a fashion hot-take?
For Halloween, pick something that is niche but hits hard. There was someone who dressed up as Ryan from The OC holding Marissa after [redacted - spoiler alert] and the caption said “You know what I like about crypto? Nothing”. (Ben McKenzie who played Ryan Atwood on The OC recently authored a book coming out swinging against crypto). There’s such a small sliver in the venn diagram of people that are both in web3 and are also OC superfans, but for them (myself included), it’s so satisfyingly resonant because the combination is so rare.